Gather 'round this small and flickering fire friends and strangers, because I have a short and grim story to tell as the shadows twist and the stars shift and a moon almost full turns the forest to darkness and brings light that's cold not warm. Last night she appeared in my dreams, revealing herself at last, and though I've known that she's been with me for a long time I never understood until this morning. Never saw her face or knew what to call her.

Her name, I discovered in that dream, is Adeline. She's a lioness, and I raised her from cub to empress. True to the nature of her kind she's large, heavy and savage. Razor claws, sharp teeth, strength incalculably greater than that of a mortal like me.

She loves me, yet I fear her baser instincts. When she puts her arms on my shoulders and I feel her paws on the back of my neck I know she's showing that love, yet I wonder when will come the day I take a miss step and accidently trigger her, when those claws will come out and she'll rip my head off.

I know living with a lion is crazy, it's absolute fucking insanity, yet when I try to lock her away something inside, a force almost as savage, pulls the key from my soul's pocket and lets her out again. I can't stand to hurt her, to betray her, to try and imprison her. She's my strength, my power, my shield and my lover.

And, in truth, I fool myself. My key is a fake. Mr. Fox works for her, sits high in her councils, and the two of them constantly conspire against me. Whenever the notion to part ways with Adeline enters my mind she pounces and pins me down, tail twitching, those eyes locking with mine and the claws sliding out and her heaviness making it impossible to rise, to breathe, to do something as simple as believe I could ever have a life without her even though she threatens to end that life right then and there.

And just who was there for you, the two of them ask. When you wanted to put a gun to your head, when the world turned red, when there was nothing left? And now you betray us?

The solution, it seems, is also the problem, yet in this world that's not a rarity, it's a commonality so prolific, purile and predictable even a fool must realize history can map the future, and within the cracked and cruel facets of that broken crystal ball are revealed in shattered clarity the forces that shape us all.

And so my lioness is my jailor, my savior, my solace and my problem and my damnation and my absolution. Fox and lioness, married and exchanging their vows at the bottom of a cocktail glass, surrounded by green bottles and under the looming creak of three sheeted masts bellied full by the winds of the West.

I love you, Adeline. Let this slender, shaking fox give a huge lioness a hug. It'll all be fine. You wouldn't hurt me, would you?

I suppose, as they say, it will all tell in time.

For now then, I guess this is good bye.